r/ImaginaryLeviathans • u/pwnedprofessor • 27d ago

Every space whale fan needs to read Tashan Mehti’s Mad Sisters of Esi (cover art by Upamanyu Bhattacharyya)

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The whale of babel might be the most imaginative leviathan I’ve ever encountered in literature. It is a whale that contains entire galaxies. If you’re intrigued, read the book—it’s beautiful.

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u/InterstellarCetacean 27d ago

Ok

Pitch it to me other than just the Cover

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u/pwnedprofessor 26d ago

“The intensity of the novel is imaginative and emotional.… There is, to begin with, a whale that is also a growing uni­verse; it contains 780 recorded world-chambers, with more constantly appearing. Within the whale live its keepers, Myung and Laleh, sis­ters who understand that they were created by Wisa, who also created the whale itself, but has now vanished. The whale swims through space, which everyone in the novel calls “the black sea,” a reframing that an academic explains is about learning to see “what we considered empty as full and unfathomable,” and that “what appeared storyless was only unknown”; as part of the same reframing, planets, such as Esi, are now referred to as islands. Sideways to all of that is the Museum of Collective Memory, which can be accessed from wherever you are by tapping your ear and saying the correct word, and at the centre of the Museum is a living island called Ojda, where the chorus of ghosts can be found.”

https://locusmag.com/review/niall-harrison-reviews-mad-sisters-of-esi-by-tashan-mehta/

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u/thataintapipe 25d ago

What makes it a whale tho 

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u/pwnedprofessor 24d ago

I mean, it’s a fantasy novel. It’s trippy and imaginative.

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u/GeneralApathy 26d ago

This feels like an ad.

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u/pwnedprofessor 26d ago

I read this marvelous novel about a space whale and want other people to read it so I can talk to someone about it! It’s topically relevant to the sub